Jeff Winick

From the May issue: Drugstore chain Duane Reade had a problem: A competitor was sniffing around a large space across the street from one of its best Midtown locations on Sixth Avenue near West 57th Street. Officials at the store enlisted its broker, Winick Realty Group, to take care of the situation.

Several months later, not only had the competitor disappeared, but Duane Reade had taken that site at 100 West 57th Street for itself.

That’s partly thanks to Winick Realty’s founder and CEO, Jeff Winick, who used back channels to help secure the site for the drugstore. Winick’s aggressive, take-no-prisoners style seems to win him accolades from clients but has created fierce enmity among his competition.

That style has been on full display for the last few weeks in a federal courtroom in Lower Manhattan, where two former Duane Reade executives are on trial for fraudulently pumping up earnings reports, partly through allegedly bogus real estate transactions involving Winick. [more]

1775 Broadway, where Kohl’s was reportedly looking to open its first Manhattan site (source: PropertyShark)

From the December issue: This holiday shopping season, the biggest sale in Manhattan just might be for flagship space. As 2009 draws to a close, the anemic pace of major retail leasing — the five major Manhattan retail submarkets tracked by Cushman & Wakefield scored just one deal over 10,000 square feet this year, compared to 11 across the same five submarkets in 2008 — has started picking up. Following a deal by furniture retailer Raymour & Flanagan for 30,000 square feet in August, brokers say tenants are finally looking around, after almost zero activity in the first half of the year. Bradley Mendelson, an executive director of Cushman & Wakefield, told The Real Deal he had a signed commitment last month from a tenant for 16,500 square feet of corner and second-floor space at 666 Fifth Avenue, perhaps the most prominent of a slew of major flagship vacancies across Manhattan.  More

[more]

David Picket, president of the Gotham Organization, inside 200 West, his firm’s new rental on West 72nd Street.

From the December issue: West 72nd Street and Broadway epitomizes old New York. Brick-and-terra-cotta icons like the famed Dorilton mix with the bright lights of Gray’s Papaya. But there’s a newcomer that looks more like South Beach, splashing glass amid the stately stone.
Named 200 West for its 72nd Street address, the 19-story rental tower broke ground in 2007, near the height of the boom, and is scheduled to start leasing in February. In addition to the 196 apartments, the building, which wraps an obtuse-angled corner, also has a total of 50,000 square feet of big-box-style, multilevel space for three retailers. That’s in a neighborhood where stores typically measure a fraction of the size. “We will certainly liven up that corner a lot,” said David Picket, president of the Gotham Organization, the developer of the $220 million project and one of its three investors. The others are Philips International Holding and Rhodes NY. [more]

From the July issue: When the economy is strong, many landlords turn their noses up at
restaurant tenants, fearing unpleasant food odors, vermin and noise.
But as retail vacancies proliferate across the city and the recession
drags on, the tables have turned and landlords are rethinking their
disdain for eateries. “They used to be sort of perceived as a hassle because of potential
odors, but now they are seen as rent-paying tenants,” said Jeffrey
Roseman, executive vice president and principal at Newmark Knight
Frank, who represented landlords and tenants in a handful of restaurant
deals last month. “Landlords who never wanted restaurants in certain
spaces now will consider them.” Comments

• Tweet

From the July issue: Nearly a dozen retail vacancies dot
Broadway between Houston Street and
Astor Place. In recent years of economic excess, the strip languished
in the shopping shadow of its neighbors — trendy Soho to the south and
bustling Union Square to the north.
But in today’s sagging economy, Noho, with its rents half the price
of areas like Soho, could draw new retail blood such as apparel
tenants, gourmet markets, and European brands that would have
previously turned their noses up at the area, brokers said. Still, the
economy and bleak national retail picture are stalling the
neighborhood’s resurgence. Due to market conditions, “so many retailers
have pulled back,”
said Jeffrey Roseman, a principal and executive vice president at
Newmark Knight Frank Retail. [more]